It’s the latest craze sweeping Australian coaching sports psychology. Forget about patting your players on the back, tossing them some brightly-coloured electrolytes and mumbling your way through some poorly translated motivational quote.
Instead, after a poor performance, just find the nearest microphone, take a big deep breath … and spray.
Former Norths hooker Tony Rae started the trend a couple of weeks ago, unleashing the inner Bad News Bear in a spray of his Brumbies rugby union side. It was ten times more impressive than what they’ve been able to cough up this season.
On Saturday night Tim Sheens went one better than Rae, sticking the ugg boot into his winning Tigers side at the post-match press conference. Brian Smith should be so lucky.
As a coaching tool, the spray is as old as Ray Warren’s knock-knock jokes, and there have been some great sprayers in the game over the years. Bob Fulton, John Lang, Des ‘the Doorman’ Hasler…all these blokes could spray refs, players and administrators like Terry Hill calling the Melbourne Cup if provoked.
The spraying of your own players post-match seems a low-percentage play though, particularly in these days of increased player power within football clubs. Whilst Sheens may feel the right to job security through a new multi-year contract deal, is it really wise for the Commander in Chief to be bagging the blokes on the front line?
For mine this public post-match spray is a smokescreen, less about the coach revving up the players and more about them trying to get the fans onside by distancing themselves from a team’s poor play.
In the day of the angry internet nerd, any coach whose name doesn’t start with ‘W’ and end with ‘ayne Bennett’ can be the next Murray Hurst pretty easily, with a few quick rumours and irate emails.
This has lead to a new level of the coach pandering to the fan.
Granted, no NRL coach has felt the need to hold a community session with a PowerPoint presentation and some watered down cordial like some other sports teams, but it does seem that that the modern coach has a requirement to be a lot more open, friendly and ‘accessible’ to Peter Pie-eater on the Hill.
Perhaps the fan appreciates all this attention, feels more involved and dreams of the day where he can text Sheens directly (MLTZEN ISNT A CTR TS! :/) to help choose his side.
In contrast to this there’s the other coaching school of thought on this, the one along the lines of ‘If you keep listening to the bloke on the hill, pretty soon you’ll be out there sitting with him.’
The man who said this is a successful coach, rare sprayer, and probably the least accessible NRL coach to the fans and media.
I’ll give you a hint. His name starts with ‘W’…
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